MKJV - Lamentations

Chapter 1

1:1  How alone sits the city that was full of people! She has become like a widow, once great among the nations, a noblewoman among the nations, but now has become a tribute-payer.

1:2  She bitterly weeps in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks; among all her lovers, she has none to comfort her. All her friends have dealt deceitfully with her; they became her enemies.

1:3  Judah went into captivity because of affliction, and from great slavery. She dwells among the nations; she finds no rest; all her pursuers have overtaken her between the narrows.

1:4  The roads of Zion mourn without any going to the appointed feasts. All her gates are deserted; her priests sigh; her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness.

1:5  Her enemies have become as chief; her haters are at ease; for the LORD has afflicted her for the multitude of her sins. Her children have gone, captive before the enemy.

1:6  And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty has departed. Her rulers have become like bucks: they find no pasture, and they have gone without strength before the pursuer.

1:7  In the days of her affliction and her wandering Jerusalem remembered all her desirable things from previous days; when her people fell into the hand of the foe; and there is no ally for her. The foes saw her; they laughed at her annihilation.

1:8  Jerusalem has grievously sinned, therefore she has been removed. All knowing her despise her because they saw her nakedness; yea, she sighs and turns backward.

1:9  Her uncleanness is in her skirts; she did not remember her end, and has gone down astoundingly. There is no comforter for her. O LORD, behold my affliction, for the enemy has magnified himself.

1:10  The enemy has spread out his hand upon all her desirable things; for she has seen the nations enter her holy place, whom You commanded that they should not enter into Your congregation.

1:11  All her people sigh; they seek bread. They have given their desirable things for food to relieve the soul. See, O LORD, and look on me, for I have become vile.

1:12  Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Behold and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow which is done to me, with which the LORD has afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger.

1:13  From above He has sent fire into my bones and it has laid them low. He has spread a net for my feet; He has turned me back; He has made me amazed and faint all the day.

1:14  The yoke of my transgressions is bound by His hand; they intertwine; they rise on my neck. He has made my strength to falter; the LORD has delivered me into their hands. I am not able to rise up.

1:15  The LORD has trampled all my mighty ones in my midst; He has called a gathering against me to crush my young men. The LORD has trod the virgin daughter of Judah, as in a winepress.

1:16  For these I weep; my eye, my eye runs down with water, because the comforter who could refresh my soul is far from me. My sons are desolated because the enemy prevails.

1:17  Zion spreads forth her hands; none is comforting to me; the LORD has commanded concerning Jacob that his enemies should be all around him; Jerusalem has become as an impure thing among them.

1:18  The LORD is righteous, for I have rebelled against His command. I beseech you, all peoples, hear and behold my sorrow. My virgins and my young men went into exile.

1:19  I called for my lovers, but they deceived me; my priests and my elders expired in the city while they sought food for them to bring back their life.

1:20  Behold, O LORD, for I am in trouble; my inward parts ferment; my heart is turned within me, for I have grievously rebelled. On the outside the sword bereaves; in the house it is as death.

1:21  They hear that I sigh; there is none to comfort me. All my enemies have heard my evil; they are glad that You have done it. You will bring the day that You have called, and they shall be like me.

1:22  Let all their wickedness come before You; and do to them as You have done to me for all my transgressions. For my sighs are many, and my heart is faint.

Chapter 2

2:1  How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in His anger! He cast down the beauty of Israel from the heavens to the earth and remembered not His footstool in the day of His anger.

2:2  The Lord swallowed up all the dwelling-places of Jacob and has not pitied. In His wrath He has thrown down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; He has brought them down to the ground. He has defiled the kingdom and its rulers.

2:3  He has cut off all the horn of Israel in His fierce anger; He has drawn back His right hand from before the enemy, and He burned against Jacob like flaming fire which devours all around.

2:4  He has bent His bow like an enemy; He stood with His right hand like an adversary, and killed all who were desirable to the eye in the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion. He poured out His fury like fire.

2:5  The LORD was like an enemy; He swallowed up Israel; He has swallowed up all her palaces, and destroyed His strongholds. And He has increased mourning and weeping in the daughter of Judah.

2:6  And He violated His booth like a garden, and destroyed His meeting places. The LORD caused the meeting places and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and He despised the king and the priest in the fury of His anger.

2:7  The LORD has cast off His altar; He rejected His sanctuary; He has given up the walls of her palaces into the hater's hand. They gave a noise in the house of the LORD, as a day of meeting.

2:8  The LORD purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion; He has stretched out a line; He has not withdrawn His hand from swallowing, and He made rampart and wall lament; they languish together.

2:9  Her gates have sunk in the ground; He has destroyed and broken her bars. Her kings and her rulers are among the nations. The law is no more; also her prophets also find no vision from the LORD.

2:10  The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground and are silent; they send up dust on their heads; they gird on sackclothes. The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.

2:11  My eyes fail with tears; my inward parts ferment; my liver is poured on the ground for the ruin of the daughter of my people, in that the children and the babies faint in the streets of the city.

2:12  They say to their mothers, Where are grain and wine? In their fainting they are like the wounded in the streets of the city, in their pouring out their lives to their mothers' bosom.

2:13  What can I testify for you? What thing shall I compare to you, O daughter of Jerusalem? What shall I equal to you, so that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For your break is great like the sea! Who can heal you?

2:14  Your prophets have seen false and foolish things for you, and they have not uncovered your iniquity, to turn away your captivity; but they have seen false oracles and seductions for you.

2:15  All who pass by clap their hands at you; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city which they called the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth?

2:16  All your enemies have opened their mouth against you; they hiss and gnash the teeth; they say, We have swallowed her up. Certainly this is the day that we looked for; we have found, we have seen.

2:17  The LORD has done what He has purposed; He has fulfilled His word which He commanded from the days of old. He has thrown down and not pitied. And He caused your hater to rejoice over you; He has set up the horn of your foes.

2:18  Their heart cried to the LORD. O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a torrent day and night; give yourself no rest. Let not the daughter of your eye cease.

2:19  Arise, cry out in the night. At the beginning of the watches, pour out your heart like water before the face of the LORD. Lift up your hands toward Him for the life of your children who are faint for hunger in the head of every street.

2:20  Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom You have done this. Shall the women eat their fruit, children of tender care? Shall the priest and the prophet be killed in the holy place of the Lord?

2:21  Young and old lie on the ground in the streets; my virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword. You have killed them in the day of Your anger; You have killed and not pitied.

2:22  You have called as in a solemn day my terrors all around, and here was not an escaped one or a survivor in the day of the LORD's anger. Those whom I have nursed and multiplied, my enemy has consumed.

Chapter 3

3:1  I the man have seen affliction by the rod of His wrath.

3:2  He has led me and made me go in darkness and not into light.

3:3  Surely He turned against me; He turns His hand all the day.

3:4  He has wasted my flesh and my skin; He has broken my bones.

3:5  He built against me and has circled me with bitterness and hardship.

3:6  He has made me live in dark places, like the dead of old.

3:7  He has set a fence around me and I cannot go out; He has made my bronze chain heavy.

3:8  Also when I cry and shout, He shuts out my prayer.

3:9  He walled up my ways with cut stone; my paths are crooked.

3:10  He was a bear lying in wait for me, a lion in secret places.

3:11  He has turned my ways aside and torn me in pieces. He made me desolate.

3:12  He has bent His bow and set me as a mark for the arrow.

3:13  He has caused the arrows of His quiver to enter into my inward parts.

3:14  I was a mockery to all my people, their song all the day.

3:15  He has filled me with bitterness and made me drunk with wormwood.

3:16  He also broke my teeth with gravel; He has covered me in the ashes.

3:17  And You cast off my soul from peace; I have forgotten blessedness.

3:18  And I said, My strength and my hope from the LORD are gone.

3:19  Remember my affliction and my wandering, as wormwood and bitterness.

3:20  My soul vividly remembers and bows down on me.

3:21  I recall this to my mind; therefore I hope.

3:22  It is by the LORD's kindnesses that we are not destroyed, because His mercies never fail.

3:23  They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.

3:24  The LORD is my portion, says my soul; therefore I will hope in Him.

3:25  The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him.

3:26  It is good that one should hope for the salvation of the LORD, even in silence.

3:27  It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.

3:28  He sits alone and keeps silence because He laid it on him.

3:29  He puts his mouth in the dust, if perhaps there may be hope.

3:30  He gives his cheek to Him who strikes him; he is filled with reproach.

3:31  For the Lord will not cast off forever;

3:32  for though He causes grief, yet He will have pity according to the multitude of His kindnesses.

3:33  For He does not afflict from His heart, nor does He grieve the sons of men;

3:34  to crush all the prisoners of the earth under his feet;

3:35  to turn aside the right of a man before the face of the Most High;

3:36  to pervert a man in his cause-- this the LORD does not see.

3:37  Who is this who speaks, and it occurs, when the Lord does not command it?

3:38  From the mouth of the Most High does not go out the evil and the good.

3:39  What? Should mankind complain, a living man, because of his sins?

3:40  Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the LORD.

3:41  Let us lift up our heart and hands to God in Heaven.

3:42  We have sinned and have rebelled; You have not forgiven.

3:43  You have wrapped Yourself with anger and pursued us; You have slain; You have not pitied.

3:44  You have wrapped Yourself with a cloud from any prayer passing through.

3:45  You have made us as the sweepings and garbage in the midst of the peoples.

3:46  All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.

3:47  Fear and a pit have come to us, shame and ruin.

3:48  Streams of water run down my eye for the ruin of the daughter of my people.

3:49  My eye flows out and does not cease, from there being no intermission,

3:50  until the LORD shall look down and behold from Heaven.

3:51  My eye pains my soul because of all the daughters of my city.

3:52  My haters have hunted me, like a bird, without cause.

3:53  They have cut off my life in the pit, and cast a stone at me.

3:54  Waters flowed over my head; then I said, I am cut off.

3:55  I called on Your name, O LORD, out of the lowest pit.

3:56  You have heard my voice; do not hide Your ear at my relief, at my cry for help.

3:57  You drew near in the day that I called on You; You said, Fear not.

3:58  O LORD, You strove for the causes of my soul; You redeemed my life.

3:59  O Lord, You have seen my wrong; judge my cause.

3:60  You have seen all their vengeance, all their plots against me.

3:61  You have heard their reproach, O LORD, all their plots against me;

3:62  the lips of those who rose up against me, and their scheming against me all the day.

3:63  Behold their sitting down and their rising up; I am their song.

3:64  You will return to them a recompense, O LORD, according to the work of their hands.

3:65  You will give them dullness of heart, Your curse on them.

3:66  Pursue and destroy them in anger from under the heavens of the LORD.

Chapter 4

4:1  How the gold has become dim; the fine gold has changed! The stones of the sanctuary are poured out at the head of every street.

4:2  The precious sons of Zion are weighed against pure gold; how they are counted as earthen vessels, the work of a potter's hand!

4:3  Even the jackals draw out the breast; they suckle their young ones. The daughter of my people is cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.

4:4  The suckling's tongue cleaves to his palate in thirst; the young children ask bread; there is no breaking to them.

4:5  Those who ate delicacies are desolate in the streets; those reared in scarlet embrace dunghills.

4:6  And the iniquity of the daughter of my people is heaped more than the sin of Sodom, overthrown as in a moment, and no hands spun on her.

4:7  Her Nazarites were purer than snow, whiter than milk; they were redder of bone than corals; their cuttings as lapis lazuli, azure blue.

4:8  Their appearance is blacker than soot; they are not recognized in the streets; their skin has shriveled on their bones; it is dried up; it has become like wood.

4:9  Better are the ones slain by the sword than the ones slain by hunger; those who pine away, pierced because the fruits of my fields failed.

4:10  The hands of the pitying women have boiled their own children; they became their food in the ruin of the daughter of my people.

4:11  The LORD has fulfilled His fury; He has poured out His fierce anger, and has kindled a fire in Zion, and it has devoured its foundations.

4:12  The kings of the earth, and all the people of the world, would not have believed that the foe and the hater would go into Jerusalem's gates.

4:13  For the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests, shedding the blood of the just in her midst,

4:14  they reeled blind in the streets; they are defiled with blood, so that not any can touch their clothes.

4:15  They cried to them, Depart! Unclean! Depart, depart! Touch not! Indeed they fled and reeled; they said among the nations, They will not continue to live there.

4:16  The face of the LORD has shared them out; He will no longer look on them; they did not respect the persons of the priests; they did not favor the elders.

4:17  While we are, our eyes fail, for our help is vain; in our watching we have watched for a nation; it does not save.

4:18  They hunted our steps from going in our streets; our end was near, our days were fulfilled, for our end has come.

4:19  Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles of the heavens; they pursued us on the mountains, they lay in wait for us in the wilderness.

4:20  The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the LORD, was taken in their pits; of whom we said, In his shadow we shall live among the nations.

4:21  Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, who lives in the land of Uz. The cup also shall pass through unto you; you shall be drunken and stripped naked.

4:22  The punishment of your iniquity is fulfilled, O daughter of Zion; He will exile you no more. He will visit your iniquity, O daughter of Edom; He will expose your sins.

Chapter 5

5:1  Remember, O LORD, what has been to us; look down and see our shame.

5:2  Our inheritance has turned to aliens, our houses to foreigners.

5:3  We are orphans and fatherless; our mothers are as widows.

5:4  We have drunk our water for silver; our wood comes for a price.

5:5  We are pursued on our necks; we grow weary; rest is not given to us.

5:6  We have given the hand to Egypt, to Assyria, to be satisfied with bread.

5:7  Our fathers have sinned and are not; we have borne their iniquities.

5:8  Servants rule over us; there is no rescuer out of their hand.

5:9  We bring in our bread with our souls, because of the sword of the wilderness.

5:10  Our skin is hot like an oven because of the fever heat of famine.

5:11  They raped the women in Zion, virgins in the cities of Judah.

5:12  Rulers were hanged by the hand; the faces of elders were not honored.

5:13  They took the young men to grind, and the youths stumbled at the wood.

5:14  The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their music.

5:15  The joy of our heart has ceased; our dance has turned into mourning.

5:16  The crown has fallen from our head. Woe now to us! For we have sinned.

5:17  Our heart is faint for this; our eyes are dim for these things.

5:18  On the mountain of Zion is laid waste, the foxes walk on it.

5:19  You, O LORD, remain forever; Your throne to generation and generation.

5:20  Why do You forget us forever and forsake us the length of days?

5:21  Return us to You, O LORD, and we will turn; renew our days as of old,

5:22  unless You have utterly rejected us; You are very angry against us.